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Technical
Technicals, officially known as Non-Standard Tactical Vehicle (NSTV), is a term used to refer to improvised fighting vehicles typically made from pickup trucks by various armies or other civilian forms of transport altered for military purposes. A technical is usually a pick-up truck armed with machine guns, light mortars, anti-infantry or anti-aircraft guns and other weapons used to engage military forces in active frontline combat. Technicals were first used in pre-war times by armies to compansate for issues with equipment and fighting vehicles, especailly by guerilla and revolutionary organizations. In the post-war era, technicals remain in use and are now used on a wide and extensive scale never before seen since pre-war times by post-war armies due to their cheep production cost and easy form of construction. History Pre-War Usage Technicals were first used as early as World War II where they were deployed by the British during the North African Campaign of the Second World War. They were used by the SAS as light mobile infantry to cross against the desert and was the first major usage of non-conventional tactical fighting vehicles, though the concept was used earlier than World War II such as tachankas, horse-drawn machine gun crews on carts used during the Russian Civil War. In the 1980s, the Chadian army used them against the Libyan Army and won decisively despite being technologicall outmatched by the Libyan Army. Technicals remain in usage well into the 21st century by private security forces and non-state armies. During the European-Middle Eastern War, the armies of both the European Commonwealth and the United Arab Coalition due to supply issues, but the UAC used them far more than the Europeans due to their armies being less centralized than the European Armies. During the Sino-American War, the United States Army sustained heavy material losses in both Alaska and Mainland China and resorted to using technicals by undersupplied units using both improvised and captured fighting vehicles from the People's Liberation Army. The latter also used technicals, mainly militia forces and second line units. The United States Central Command accepted the usage of technicals as Chinese submarines from the Ghost Fleet made supplying American forces on the various fronts more and more difficult. Technicals became just as common as tanks and conventional armored fighting vehicles during the European Wars, especially by unconventional forces. Post-War Usage In the years after the Great War, many pick-up trucks and cars were reactivated and salvaged by early militias and settlement armies used for personal defense and the technical was resurected. Because it was easier to construct and reactivate than pre-war military vehicles such as tanks and APCs, technicals have become extremely commonplace in the post-war world by factions of all kinds from militias of settlements and city-states to newly emerged nation-states like the New California Republic, Cascadia, and the Far Eastern Republic. The usage of technicals has become widespread and usable by factions who've entered into a period of Industrial Revival allowing them to construct technicals alongside restored pre-war military hardware and post-war recreations or modified reactivated antiquated vehicles. Design A technical is usually any kind of civilian car, primarily a pick-up truck, which has a machine gun or other kind of weapon attached to the back. The most common armament by far is a general purpose machine gun such as the M60 or PKM or a heavy machine gun such a the Browning M2 or DShK, though other weapons, including miniguns, energy weapons, mortars, missile launchers and recoilless rifles, and even anti-aircraft guns such as a ZU-23 may be attached. When armed with a heavy weapon such as a missile launcher or recoilless rifle, a technical can even engage more heavily armored vehicles. While usually at a major disadvantage against pre-war armor, there are case of technicals armed with anti-tank weapons using their superior speed and mobility to hit armored vehicles on the weaker flanks. Technicals are often armored with whatever scrap metal is available to the builders, in general, the engine compartment, fusion cores or fuel tanks, and the cab are armored with steel plates thick enough to resist small arms fire, however, the turret is often open, protected only by a gun shield. Some technicals, however, do have partially or fully enclosed turrets. Gun trucks A gun truck is a heavier vehicle similar to a technical, but built on a larger truck, the most common examples being medium weight trucks between 2.5 and 10 tons capacity. These vehicles may mount multiple light weapons, usually machine guns, with a common configuration between two turrets, one at the front and one to the rear. Other gun trucks may have heavier weapons such as a turret with multiple machine guns guns, such as a quad .50 mount, or a larger anti-aircraft gun such as a 40mm autocannon. Some gun trucks also have partially or fully enclosed turrets to give greater protection that most technicals. Conversion Kits With the rise of postwar nation-states such as the New California Republic and the subsequent Industrial Revival, many nation states have come up with sets of parts of a standardized size, designed to be placed on a common model of vehicle to convert it into an armored car. These represent the mid-point between a technical and a purpose-built armored vehicle. Postwar-activated steel mills in the NCR, Cascadia, Japan, New Ireland, the Far Eastern Republic, among other places produce a variety of conversion kits for vehicles common in their respective areas. For instance, the NCR corporation Republic Steel produces the M64 Standard Conversion Kit, which is designed use with 2.5-ton or 5-ton trucks and consists of the following items, all fitted with between 10 and 20mm of steel armor: *nine steel tubes for use as a frame for the rear troop bay to be constructed over the truck bed. *14 steel plates pre-measured to be attached to the body of the vehicle, to be attached to the engine, cab, and troop bay frame (12 plates if armored troop bay roof is not attached). *3 armored armored doors (two for the cab and one for the troop bay) and retractable armored shutters with viewing slits to cover the cab windows. *6 small retractable armored shutters for firing ports in the troop bay. *An optional armored roof hatch and pintle mount or cylindrical turret. Both mounting options are capable of fitting an M2 .50 machine gun, minigun, or Gatling laser, the open pintle mount can also fit an anti-tank missile launcher or recoilless rifle. *Two benches for the interior of the troop bay. When assembled, the M64 kit converts the truck into a light armored personnel carrier capable of carry 12 fully equipped soldiers, plus a driver and gunner, and is capable of resisting small arms fire up to 12.7mm. Tractor Tanks In addition to more traditional technicals, heavy construction and farming vehicles such as tractors and bulldozers would often be fitted with thicker armor, in some case amounting to over 75mm of steel or even improvised composite armor made from layers of steel and concrete. These vehicles, sometimes known as "tractor tanks" or "killdozers" came in two basic types. The first and most common type of "tractor tank" consisted of the simple placement of armor mounted the existing cab and engines. These vehicles are typically one-of-a-kind improvised tanks, which often lack a true turret, instead having multiple gunports or machine guns around the cab, and are often armed only with machine guns. As the Industrial Revival took hold, various post-war nation states sought to supplement their existing armored forces with a standard armored vehicle based on a crawler tractor or bulldozer chassis. These standardized vehicles are often more extensive remodels of the vehicle, similar to "tractor tanks" of the first half of the 20th century, such as the Disston, Bob Semple, and NI tanks. In the case of these vehicles, the original cab and external body is removed, often stripping the vehicle down to only the chassis, engine, and drive system, and then replaced with an armored box constructed of welded or riveted steel plates. A small turret is usually mounted on top of the armored body, which may be equipped with one or more machine guns and/or a light cannon. Common armaments include .50 caliber machine guns, miniguns, automatic grenade launchers, Gatling lasers, light autocannons, pack howitzers, or modified mortars, typically in 60 or 81mm caliber. When a mortar is mounted as a tractor tank gun, it is turned sideways as a direct fire weapon and the fixed firing pin is replaced with a more conventional trigger-activated design- so that the gun does not fire until the trigger is pulled- and the weapon is modified to be loaded for the breech. Where such weapons are available, M46 "Fat Man" micro-nuclear launchers are sometimes mounted in the turret. Rocket and missile launchers or recoilless rifles cannot be mounted in the turret as the backblast would severely injure or kill the crew in the confined interior of the tank. Such weapons are sometimes placed in external racks on the sides or top of the turret, fired by simple electrical switch, in a manner similar to the M50A5 Ontos, working around the problem of the backblast. Regardless of the design, "tractor tanks" are no match for a dedicated pre-war tank or armored vehicle, which carry armor that render most weapons (with the possible exception of some ATGM launchers) ineffective, and are armed with far heavier weapons, which can easily destroy a tractor tank. Pre-war tanks are also far faster and have fire control systems that allow them to effectively fire their weapons on the move or at long ranges, which most tractor tanks lack. Tractor tanks also tend to be far more vulnerable to infantry-held rocket launchers and recoilless rifle than pre-war tanks, though some users attempt to mitigate this at least to some degree with the use of "slat armor" designed to prematurely detonate shaped charges and render them ineffective. In spite of these weaknesses, tractor tanks can be very effective when deployed against the infantry, light vehicles, or unfortified structures. When a force possesses both tractor tanks and purpose-built pre-war armor, tractor tanks will often be deployed in alongside or slightly behind pre-war tanks, with the pre-war armored vehicles being used as shock forces to destroy enemy armor and heavy weapons and breach the enemy defenses, and potentially even advance further to attack the enemy rear, before the tractor tanks move up in support of the infantry. Standardized Tractor Tank Models *'M35 Light Tank (New California Republic)'- Armament: machine gun, minigun, Gatling laser, or grenade launcher, optional side-mounted rocket launchers or recoilless rifles *'M42 Light Tank (New California Republic)'- Armament: 60mm mortar modified for direct fire, co-axial machine gun, optional side-mounted rocket launchers or recoilless rifles *'M38 Light Tank (Cascadia)'- Armament: modified 60mm mortar, co-axial MG, pintle mount for MG or missile launcher, side mounts for missile launchers or recoilless rifles. *'T-33 Tractor Tank (Far Eastern Republic)'- 57mm main gun, co-axial MG, pintle mount for MG or launcher *'Type 39 Auxiliary Tank (postwar Japanese state)-' Armament: modified 60mm mortar, co-axial MG, pintle-mounted MG. *'Mark I Tractor Tank (New Republic of Ireland)': Armament- MG, minigun, or grenade launcher *'Mark II Tractor Tank (New Republic of Ireland)': Armament- modified 60mm L-16 mortar, co-axial MG, pintle-mounted MG *'Nahkampfkanone 48 (Swiss Confederation)': Tank destroyer/self-propelled gun armed with a non-traversable 90mm anti-tank gun on crawler-tractor chassis, pintle-mounted MG secondary armament. Notable Users Pre-War Operators *Chad *Rhodesia *Germany *France *United Kingdom *United States *China Post-War Operators *New California Republic *Far Eastern Republic *Cascadia *United Spanish Republic Gallery Toyota technical w fighters.jpg|NCR Recon soldiers riding on a technical during the Mojave Campaign. Libyan technical vehicles.jpg|Libyan National Army soldiers with technicals. ISIS technicals.jpg|Technicals being used by the Army of Caliphate of Cadiz. Category:Vehicles Category:Weapons Category:Technology